


choke back your pain

by auroracode



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Gen, Mentions of Suicide, Non Graphic descriptions of Surgery, Temporary Character Death, brief apperance by drumbot brian, fanon typical jonny angst, jonny and the aurora are friends, jonny has very complicated feelings towards carmilla, jonny is protective of the other mechs, jonny's a somewhat biased narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26656810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auroracode/pseuds/auroracode
Summary: Technically he was only the first mate, but he had to protect the crew; after all, it wasn’t like their ‘Captain’ would. It was better for him to be the one she found, he’d had many more years of dealing with what would come of it, it wouldn’t affect him as much as it would them. That was what he always told himself at least, after all, he was already broken.
Relationships: Dr Carmilla & Jonny d'Ville
Comments: 15
Kudos: 77





	choke back your pain

A hoarse cry was all that escaped Jonny's throat as Doctor Carmilla dug deeper into his chest, he'd long since screamed his throat raw over the previous several hours of her ministrations, leaving him without the ability to make much of a sound. He was probably going to have to kill himself to get it healed up in time for their next concert, he absently thought; it wasn’t the most appropriate thought to be having at the current moment, but he was desperately clinging to anything that might distract him from the agonizing pain he was in. 

He supposed it really was his own fault that he was suffering currently; he’d noticed that the doctor was on the prowl for someone to experiment on, and he could have easily found a place to hide from her, but he hadn’t. Except for Nastya, who might have been warned by Aurora, he knew none of the rest of the crew were aware that she was on the lookout for a 'volunteer’, that much was clear from the way he could tell they were carrying on with their daily activities.

His hearing was much better than a normal human’s, a side effect of some of the experiments Carmila had done when she mechanized him, and he could generally hear anything that was going on within one or two rooms away from him. Sometimes the amount of sound he could hear got overwhelming, but it was generally pretty helpful in keeping track of the others. He hadn't been able to tell where Brian or Nastya had been, and he hadn't really cared about the Toy Soldier's location; but he'd known Ashes was in the kitchen causing trouble, Ivy was in her library, and their newest member Tim was in his room still trying to come to terms with the fact that he was now immortal. 

(Jonny still felt bad about that; he’d tried to stop Carmilla from mechanizing Tim, he wouldn’t wish that on his worse enemy let alone someone he’d come to consider a friend, but she’d just shot him in the head and by the time he’d revived it was too late)

None of them had had the slightest clue as to the danger that had been stalking the halls, it would have been so easy for him to let them deal with Carmilla or to simply warn them and then leave them to their own devices; but the little bit of conscience he had left had decided to rear its ugly head. 

Technically he was only the first mate, but he had to protect the crew; after all, it wasn’t like their ‘Captain’ would. It was better for him to be the one she found, he’d had many more years of dealing with what would come of it, it wouldn’t affect him as much as it would them. That was what he always told himself at least, after all, he was already broken. 

(He did his best to ignore the small voice in the back of his head that said he also deserved and wanted the pain, that it was his punishment for failing to keep the others out of Carmilla's grasp in the first place, that it was karma for all the blood that stained his hands.)

It was a simple matter to ask the Aurora to shut and lock certain doors so the doctor would have to follow a path that lead straight to him; he might not be able to understand the ship in the same way that Nastya could, didn’t hear the actual words she was saying, but they communicated well enough. He’d known her longer than any of them, including Carmilla, even if it was only by an hour or so. She could understand him just fine and over the years he’d learned to read the flickering of her lights and the creaks and groans she made. Not that that meant she’d always listen to him, Aurora could be rather picky, but if it was for the safety of the crew she’d generally cooperate.

Of course, just because he’d planned it all out and knew what was coming, didn’t mean that he hadn’t felt a surge of fear when Carmilla had walked into the room and smiled at the sight of him. He’d really wanted to shoot her, to kill her and wipe that joy off her face, but that would have been hard to do. It wasn’t that she died any less easily than a normal person, a bullet in the head would kill her just as quickly as it would any of the other crew members, but actually going through with shooting her was difficult. 

Jonny didn't know if it was something she'd managed to program into them or if it was some weird vampire power, but there was almost a compulsion not to hurt her. They could hurt her accidentally, or even accidentally on purpose if they worked hard to set things up right, but an outright open attack took a lot of effort to do and generally resulted in some kind of backlash. It was easier to just try and avoid her.

That hadn't been an option for Jonny though, and so he'd reluctantly followed Camilla back to her lab, hoping that whatever she wanted to do would be quick. Sometimes she merely wanted somebody to drink some weird concoction or touch some object, and while inevitably painful and ofttimes fatal, it would be over quickly. Once he'd entered the lab and caught sight of the medical tools and the straps on the table though, he'd known that would not be the case that time. 

Carmilla had looked at him expectantly and he'd shaken his head. 

"No. Absolutely not." He'd told her, taking a step backward towards the door, he'd known he couldn't actually escape but he wasn't just going to willingly submit to the torture. The doctor had just sighed, looking as if she had expected such a response and yet was still disappointed in him for it, and then she had shot him in the head. When he'd revived he'd already been strapped to the table.

A sudden spasm of pain shot through him, pulling him out of the flashback that he'd been distracting himself with, and he unconsciously flinched in an attempt to get away from it. Carmilla clicked her tongue in annoyance at his movement and pressed down on his shoulder with her elbow, to keep him in place while she fiddled with something in his heart. His jaw clenched as the weight pulled at one side of his chest, forcing the gaping wound in it open further, and allowing the cold air of the room to brush over his exposed organs. It wasn’t exactly painful, but it was yet another unpleasant sensation to add the long list of ones he was already feeling. He’d asked her once, not long after he’d been first mechanized, why it was necessary to cut him open for maintenance when his heart was accessible without doing so? She’d explained that she couldn’t access everything from just the front, which he supposed made sense, but it didn’t make it any more pleasant. 

“It’s truly amazing how shoddy my work used to be, there are so many flaws” The doctor commented as she dug deeper into his chest, though Jonny wasn’t really sure whether she was talking to him or herself. She had a tendency to do both, and would ofttimes get upset if you didn’t respond in the appropriate manner. “I suppose I’ll have to get around to doing some upgrades, maybe try out some new things, I have so many ideas.”

Jonny couldn’t help the whimper that escaped his throat at that pronouncement; it wasn’t unusual for Carmilla to do ‘routine maintenance’ like she currently was (which while technically maintenance, wasn’t actually routine, given she just grabbed the first crew member she saw after deciding to cut someone open) and it always hurt terribly, but it was so much worse when she decided to make alterations. 

In response to the noise, Carmilla took one of her hands out of Jonny’s chest and gently carded her fingers through his hair, like a mother would to console a child. Any comfort that such an action would bring should have been negated by the fact that her hand was sticky with his own blood, and yet he couldn’t help but lean into the touch, desperate for that little bit of gentleness among all the pain. 

“Shh, it’s for the good of all of you.” Carmilla’s voice was soft and he hated it. He hated her twisted sense of what was good for them, hated the way she’d switch back and forth between hurting him and see to care, hated the way she treated him like a misbehaving child anytime he tried to stand up to her; and most of all he hated himself for craving the affection of the only mother figure he’d ever known, despite what a monster she was. “You’re the oldest,” She told him, as she returned to messing with his mechanism. “It’s important for you to make sure things are safe for your siblings.”

Jonny’s blood ran as cold as the mercury that flowed through Nastya’s veins at the implications of that sentence, at the not even subtle admission that she was treating him as a guinea pig and that whatever she did to him, she planned to do to the others as well. If Carmilla had gotten it in her head that there were things she wanted to do to all of them, then there was nothing he could to protect them, not as long as she was around. 

Before he could follow that train of thought too far, the door to the lab slid open and someone walked in. From his spot strapped to the table, Jonny couldn’t see who had entered, but the heavy footsteps were evidence enough to let him know it was Brian. 

“What is it?” Carmilla’s voice wasn’t quite rude, but it was quite clear she was annoyed with the interruption

“We'll be arriving…” Brian’s voice faltered and Jonny knew he’d spotted him and realized what Carmilla had been working on; he was very grateful at that moment that he couldn’t see Brian’s expression, the man was far too soft and Jonny would rather not know what kind of expression he was wearing.Though to the Drumbot’s credit, he did seem to quickly recover enough to continue speaking, “We’ll be arriving at the planet you wanted to visit in about an hour.”

“Ah, very good” The annoyance in the doctor’s tone had lightened upon hearing Brian’s announcement and Jonny could see the hint of a smile on her face. “Let me know when we actually land, until then I’ll be busy.” She told him, before waving a bloodstained hand in his direction dismissively. Based on the speed at which Brian’s footsteps left the room, Jonny would say he was all too eager to obey that dismissal; under different circumstances he likely would have made fun of him for running like a coward, but currently he would very much like to flee from Carmilla as well if given a chance. 

He wasn’t going to get one though, that was very clear from the small smile on the doctor's face as she turned her full attention back to him. 

“Well, shall we continue?”

“Let’s not and just say we did.” Jonny rasped out, his throat still sore from his earlier screaming, and Carmilla laughed like she’d just heard the funniest joke ever.

“You and your sense of humor.” She commented, before her hands were thrust back into his chest to continue her work. Sometimes he found himself wondering if it would lessen the suffering somewhat if he actually understood what exactly Carmilla was doing; if he had the same medical and engineering knowledge that she did, would he see the value in her actions? Or would it just confirm that everything she did was just for her own pleasure?

Maybe he didn’t want to know after all. 

A harsh breath escaped him as something Carmilla did caused one of his ribs, which had been broken by her earlier in order to allow easier access to his heart, to stab into his lung. 

“Hmm.” Carmilla let out a frustrated sigh as she noticed the new injury and pulled her hands out of Jonny’s chest, using one of them to brush some hair out of her face and leaving a streak of blood across her forehead. “That’s going to mess with the pressure on the heart, I’ll have to start over once it's fixed.” 

If it wasn’t that his heart was made of metal he was sure it would have racing in fear, he did not want to spend another several hours under her care; perhaps there was some entity in charge of good fortune out there who took pity on him though, because rather than killing him so he could heal and she could start again, she began putting away her tools. 

“We’ll continue this later.” She told him, as she undid the straps holding him to the table, which effectively killed a lot of his relief; still having a break was better than nothing, and given her interest in testing things out on him, it might even be possible for him to hide for a couple days without her going after the others. 

Sitting up carefully, as to not agitate the still open wound in his chest, he caught the shirt that Carmilla tossed at him and pulled it on. Thankfully, she had taken it off him before operating rather than just cutting it open, he didn’t want to be walking around the ship with a hole in his chest and shirt. 

Of course the former could easily be solved by killing himself and reviving, it would heal everything up nicely, but he didn’t particularly want to do that in the doc’s lab. Hopping down off the operating, he briskly walked towards the door, intending to hide in his room to regenerate. 

“Don’t wander too far, okay?” Carmilla called after him, sounding to all the world like a concerned parent. “After I get done on the planet we’ll continue.” 

Jonny didn’t dignify her with a response and simply sped up. 

As he walked through the ship's hallways, he could feel blood soaking through his shirt but ignored it, he just needed to get to his room and then everything would be fine. 

“Aurora.” Jonny glanced up at the ceiling as he softly spoke, “Can you warn me if anyone is coming, I don’t want…” He didn’t want any of them to see him like this, over the years he and the others had seen each other beaten and bloody and even dead plenty of times, but there was just something that felt too vulnerable about letting people see him how he was now. It was bad enough Brian had already seen him while Carmilla was working, no one else needed to. 

The lights flickered in a manner he had come to know meant agreement and so he continued on his way. Save for one occasion when the lights had suddenly brightened in warning and he'd barely had time to duck into a nearby room before Ashes turned the corner, he managed to make it to his room without incident, where he sunk down to the floor as soon as the door shut. For a moment he just sat there, his head in his hands as he took several deep breaths. 

Then he shot himself in the head.

**Author's Note:**

> Mmmh so I'm really hoping this comes across as in character. The Mechs are hard to write, especially Carmilla. Obviously Jonny has a pretty biased perspective on her but I do think she really did see the Mechs as her kids and thought what she was doing was for the best. Unfortunately, her morals were very skewed.
> 
> Jonny is also very hard to write, cause he's very angry and violent but my little found family loving heart wants to believe that he does care about and feel protective of the rest of the crew. He also has very mixed feelings about Carmilla obviously that waver back and forth between love and hate. So hopefully that came across okay. 
> 
> Also while obviously they don't have the same level of relationship that Nastya and Aurora have, I will not be sway from my belief that Jonny and the Aurora are friends.


End file.
